Polyvinyl alcohol inclusion can optimize the sol-gel, mechanical and hydrophobic features of agar/konjac glucomannan system

The practical features (e.g., sol-gel, mechanical and hydrophobic) of biopolymer systems are crucial for their materials applications. This work reveals how polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) inclusion affects the practical features of agar/konjac glucomannan (KGM) system. From rheological analysis, incorporating PVA (especially 6%) enhanced the chain entanglements of resulted ternary solution (A70K24P6) with stabilized sol-gel transition point. Such effect not only increased the zero-shear viscosity (ca. 1.5 times that of agar/KGM counterpart) and structural recovery degree of A70K24P6 solution, but also caused reduced crystallites and simultaneously increased tensile strength, elongation at break and hydrophobicity for A70K24P6 film from solution dehydration. This ternary film exhibited a tensile strength of ca. 105 MPa, an elongation at break of ca. 20%, and a water contact angle of ca. 97.6°. Additionally, incorporating PVA almost unaffected the morphology of film fracture surface. These results are valuable for the design of agar/KGM systems with improved practical features.